Pakistan Fears it Will be Next in US Line of Fire

Relations between Bush's administration and Gen Musharraf's are not all they seem

by Farhan Bokhari and Edward Luce
The Financial Times
February 8, 2003

Khursheed Kasuri, Pakistan's foreign minister, this week said that he believed relations between Pakistan and the US were as close as ever. But behind the scenes, senior officials in Islamabad are voicing growing doubts about whether all will be as rosy a few months from now.

The US says it will continue to need Islamabad's assistance in the hunt for terrorists in the mountainous provinces that border Afghanistan. But Pakistani officials fear the Bush administration is planning to change its tune dramatically once the war against Iraq is out of the way.

They point to a number of recent "background briefings" and "leaks" from the Bush administration that imply Pakistan could be headed back to the relative isolation it suffered before the September 11 terrorist attacks.

"The US is a fickle superpower that has changed course before," said one Pakistan official.

Last month Nancy Powell, the US ambassador to Islamabad, caused an uproar in Pakistan when she implied that it continued to be a "platform" for the spread of global terrorism.

"Americans don't want to understand our views," says Aimal Khan, a taxi driver in Islamabad. "America sees jihad (holy war) as an act of terror, but for us this is self-defence. How can you ever justify what's happened to Muslims, be it in Palestine or Afghanistan?" Fazal Karim, a hotel waiter, adds: "America has to acknowledge that it has inflicted harm to Muslims by its policies. We should not end jihad because the Americans are telling us so."

Pakistanis are also nervous about Washington's response to apparent evidence that Islamabad transported uranium enrichment technology to North Korea in exchange for assistance with its ballistic missile programme. Pakistan denies the allegations.

But Islamabad notes - with deep misgivings - neighbouring India's increasing influence with the US administration. "We believe that the US is showing double standards towards Pakistan," says a cabinet minister in India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan. "We will keep conveying that message at the highest levels in Washington."

Officially, the Bush administration insists there are no grounds to believe that relations with Pakistan will deteriorate. But in private many are doubtful whether General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, is capable of pushing through the modernising reforms that he has promised.

Many reforms have been watered down or abandoned. "It is no longer a question of whether Pakistan is going backwards or forwards," says Anatol Lieven at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington DC. "It's a question of how rapidly it's going backwards."

Perhaps the biggest disappointment is Gen Musharraf's failure to tackle what he referred to as Pakistan's "state within a state" that is run by the Islamic groups. These include the estimated 40,000 to 50,000 madrasas, or Islamic schools, that have proliferated over the last 20 years and have provided education to most of the senior Taliban.

In late 2001 Gen Musharraf announced plans to revise the "medieval" curricula of such schools, which have been held widely responsible for the creeping radicalisation of Pakistan youth.

The reform package included setting up government-funded pilot madrasas that would teach English, science, computing and other subjects in addition to traditional theology. None has been established.

Nor has there been any serious inspection or scrutiny of the existing schools that continue to flourish especially in the lawless tribal areas that border Afghanistan - Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province.

"The government has neither the capacity to force the madrasas to reform nor the ability to influence them to co-operate," says Talat Masoud, an influential retired general, in Islamabad.

Nor is Pakistan's record on terrorism beyond reproach. In the last two months, it has released Masood Azhar, head of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed group, and Hafiz Saeed, head of the banned Lashkar-e- Toiba group. Both groups are thought to have close links with al-Qaeda. Both are operating openly under new names despite having been listed as "foreign terrorist organisations" by the US.

"Pakistan maintains a distinction between the Jihadi 'freedom fighters' that operate in (the disputed province of) Kashmir and the 'terrorist groups' that were allied to al-Qaeda," says one western diplomat in Islamabad. "In practice the distinction does not hold."

Meanwhile, Pakistan's anti-American Islamist parties appear to be growing from strength to strength, following their impressive showing in national elections last October, where they took 20 per cent of the seats and won control of two of Pakistan's four provinces.

Critics say that Washington's support for the widely criticised elections has inadvertently boosted the Islamist backlash.

In an extraordinary speech last month, Gen Musharraf warned Pakistan's Islamist leaders of the "impending danger" of western intervention in the country if they continued to pursue an anti- American line. "Nobody would come to our rescue - not even the Islamic world," he said.

Gen Musharraf was clearly exaggerating to make a point. But an increasing number of Pakistanis are prepared to believe his claim.

Copyright 2003

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